


Long Time Coming

by stephanericher



Series: 31 Days of Horoscopes [7]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-18 22:42:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9406028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: 1/18: Pursuing intellectual interests may be on hold today because of career matters. Your ambitions, whatever they are, could get a shot in the arm through some new information, possibly from far away. This could be uncovered in a newspaper, book, conversation with a friend, or online. Whichever it is, Aquarius, it's likely to work for you, so make use of it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> so this 31-day challenge is based on the wonderful [31-Day Horoscope Challenge by @icandrawamoth](http://archiveofourown.org/series/621022). Simply: read your horoscope for the day from horoscope.com (Aquarius for me); use it as a writing prompt.

Galen had found the clearing by accident, a long time ago. The clearing had been created for troopers on patrol when the Eadu base was first established, for fear of rebel spies. Then the higher-ups had forced budget cuts on Krennic and he’d pulled out most of the troops in favor of keeping the latest technologies, and had cut back the routes so the remaining troopers had patrolled authorized areas only. At this point, Galen’s not sure any of the troopers know this place exists—and that’s all the better. He can still steal out here, and even if he’s doing nothing more illicit than existing with all the knowledge of the Death Star’s great flaw, breathe a little.  
  
It’s best on days like today when the rain is barely held at bay and the mists have descended only so far, cloaking the atmosphere but giving him and Bodhi room to see each other and enough of their surroundings.  
  
Bodhi gazes all around them, silence appreciative of this little spot of brightness on the lonely planet. He takes another sip of his caf and inches closer to Galen. It is a bit colder than Galen would like, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t mind any excuse for physical closeness. He touches Bodhi on the shoulder, and Bodhi looks up into his eyes.  
  
“It’s pretty.”  
  
“Isn’t it?” says Galen.  
  
Bodhi sighs. “I wish there were places like this at home.”  
  
It’s more to himself than to Galen, but still. Sometimes Galen forgets he’s a city kid, used to bustle and noise and constant change, of turning his head to find the usual places have shifted and reincarnated, of noise that the weather does little to blot out.  
  
“What’s it like? Jedha City?”  
  
Bodhi frowns. “It’s…it’s an imperial city now. Troops all over, recruiting anyone who’ll join and shooting anyone who won’t. It wasn’t always—but.”  
  
He shrugs, taking another sip of caf. Galen rubs the top of his own mug.  
  
“It used to be—when I was a kid—you know. Religious pilgrims, people looking to aid or take advantage or both, but now.” He swallows. “Now the temple’s being stripped, and, well.”  
  
Galen knows all this, but it still hurts to hear.  
  
“They try to stop it, some of them. Mostly Saw Gerrera and his people.”  
  
Galen nearly drops his mug. “Saw Gerrera?”  
  
“Yeah, Saw Gerrera—do you?” (Know him? Know of him? The question’s loaded heavier than a cargo ship straight here from Jedha.)  
  
“I knew Saw,” Galen says, quietly.  
  
He does not say more than that—Bodhi doesn’t need to know, not now, that Saw was the one to whom he and Lyra had entrusted Jyn, the one tenuous connection he may have left to her (if she’s still alive, though the weary way Bodhi speaks is telling him how unlikely that is if she’s still with Saw). He does not say how close he and Saw once were, so long ago—because sabotaging imperial ships from his main base of operations is at once just like Saw and so unlike him. He was never about nuisance, empty statements, but the kyber is getting here as quickly as they can pull it out, and of the things Krennic complains about, rebellion is not one of them (not in the specific sense that they’re impeding his crystal deliveries, at least).  
  
“You did,” says Bodhi.  
  
“I did,” Galen repeats. “Long ago.”  
  
Not so long that Saw has forgotten who he is or what he has done (doubtless he has his reservations, to put it mildly, about Galen doing this rather than dying for the cause), not so long that Saw would not listen to his message. Galen runs his thumb over the rim of his mug. Even approaching this line of thought is putting him off. Send Bodhi, an imperial by uniform (even if he is a local kid) off to deliver what little Galen can offer? It’s a dangerous thought, but his mind clings to it, reeling it in with a tractor beam. This is it, the way out, the payoff; this makes all of his careful machinations and design, the wasted years, the potential destruction and all the blood on his hands, worth it—the weakness is useless if no one knows it exists.  
  
“Galen?”  
  
Bodhi’s leaning in; his eyes are wide and Galen cannot ask him this, not now, but it’s clear Bodhi sees something in his eyes.  
  
“I was just thinking,” Galen says (a half-truth, less than Bodhi deserves).  
  
Bodhi opens his mouth. Then he almost shuts it, but instead it changes shape to curve around a different set of syllables. “I trust you.”  
  
Galen draws a breath. Bodhi shouldn’t. No one should, but Bodhi should least of all—and yet he does, stubbornly and immovably so. His gaze flickers from Galen’s face back to the mug halfway full of caf, back to Galen’s face, but there is something hard-set in there, like a deply buried kyber crystal, and—Galen will do what he can to not betray that, to set him up for the best possible outcome (albeit of several undesirable choices). Galen sets the empty mug on a ridge on the rock next to him and takes Bodhi’s hand in his. Bodhi’s eyes remain on his face now, softening up front.  
  
“Can we stay a bit longer?” Bodhi asks.  
  
“Yes,” Galen whispers, quiet enough so it dies on the still air just beyond Bodhi’s ears.  
  
The fog is rolling in harder; it won’t start to rain for a few more hours, when the mists have let up a bit and Bodhi’s cleared to fly out, back to Jedha (and Saw and maybe, possibly, Jyn, but no, he will not let himself hope too much).  
  
Bodhi leans into him, pressing arm to arm and head to shoulder. There is so little to see, but they look regardless, the landscape (if it can be called that) for once touched by the light of the star Eadu orbits, not hidden by the night and the too-dense cloud cover. Sometimes Galen forgets days can be like this; sometimes he is reminded with a sharp blow to his stomach, as if with a vibroblade, of the home he had once had, a long time ago when he and Saw Gerrera were friends. But the human mind makes patterns and parallels when none exists; it’s the built-in way of coping, grasping at straws, making connections. It was once an evolutionary advantage, millennia ago in a star system far from here. Now it’s pointless; there are no fields of rice and there is no farmhouse behind them. There are no planetary rings behind the clouds, and his memory of that time is slowly being overtaken by this, Eadu’s inescapable dampness and the filtered or absent sunlight. But he’s been living in his memories for too long; there is an achievable future and a tangible present. He brushes his lips to Bodhi’s forehead; Bodhi’s fingers curl tighter around his palm.

**Author's Note:**

> ....and they actually got to talk properly about jedha city another time


End file.
